Loophole
by Haberdashing
Summary: Sub-AU of the Transcendence AU of Gravity Falls.
1. Chapter 1

It all started with a missing cat.

The man who had summoned Alcor for the second time this week- Derek, he had called himself Derek before- held his hands to his hips, glaring as the demon floated nonchalantly above the summoning circle.

Neither of them bothered with the typical post-summoning pleasantries.

"Where is my cat?"

The demon raised an eyebrow. "What, you lost her again? Some pet owner _you_ are."

"I'm not playing games, Alcor. I know you know. Now tell me. Where. Is. My. Cat?"

Alcor narrowed his eyes, staring unblinkingly at his summoner. "I don't like your tone of voice, mister."

"Well, _I_ don't like how you took my Lulu after we made a deal, so I guess the feeling's mutual."

It took Alcor a moment to process the meaning of the words, but once he did, he let out a loud sigh. "Look, I didn't take your cat. You just need to keep a better eye on her, okay? But if you want to make another deal to get her back, by all means, g̡o ah̸eąd̕."

"I didn't come running straight to you, you know."

Alcor tilted his head sideways, while Derek's gaze drifted downwards until settling on Alcor's wings.

"I asked around. Went to a few psychics. And you know what they all said?"

"That you're a ditz who needs to watch for his cat running out the door?"

"No." The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing, his hands balled into loose fists. "No, that's not what they said at all."

The demon waited for Derek to continue speaking, but he didn't, just kept staring at Alcor's wings as if they contained the secrets of the universe. (Alcor glanced down briefly to make sure that they weren't, in fact, displaying any images of the kind that mortals were Not Meant To See, but they remained a dull black, twitching ever so slightly.)

Finally, he had to speak up.

"Are you going to _tell_ me what they said, or do you want me to just _guess_?"

"They _said_ …" Derek hesitated, and his voice wavered as he pressed on. "They _said_ that she was taken by magic. Magic connected to _you_."

"Well, that's a load of barnacles."

Derek's face twisted into an expression of confusion.

Right. That wasn't a phrase people used nowadays, was it?

"I didn't take your cat, okay?" Although now that the man mentioned it, thinking back on the wording of their agreement, Alcor realized that he definitely _could_ have. Derek had only asked for Alcor to _find_ Lulu, not to _keep_ her. Ah well.

But the cat was lost because of magic related to him, huh? Well, nobody'd used a cat sacrifice for several months now, so…

"Those guys were just messing with you. Tr͜u̶st m͠e."

"I trust half a dozen of the best mediums on Beale Street more than I trust a demon," Derek shot back.

"And yet you came running back to me for help."

"Because I want you to give Lulu back already! What'll it cost me? And I _won't_ fall for this a third time, got that?"

"Let's see…" Alcor contemplated the cat's present location, searching through his immens library of knowledge for the information. If she was nearby, he might want to go lower on the price, for risk of his summoner choosing to search the old-fashioned way… and if she was dead, well, that was that, though maybe he could still extract some payment in exchange for that information.

But little Lulu didn't seem to be nearby, or in the afterlife… or far from home, either.

As far as Alcor could tell, Lulu was nowhere to be found at all.

"How inţerestinǵ… Could she be stuck in a top-secret government facility, perhaps? Or maybe a pocket dimension?" He had meant the words to come out as a mere murmur at most, used to keep his thoughts on track more than anything else, but the dumbfounded look on Derek's face and the way he pressed his palm against his forehead made Alcor realize that his speech had been loud enough for the man to hear.

"Why on _earth_ would my cat be trapped in a pocket dimension?"

Alcor blinked as he focused his vision on the summoner's face. "Well, she wouldn't be on earth, now, would she?" he replied glibly. "That's rather the idea of a pocket dimension."

"What- I-" Derek flailed his hands around wildly above his head, as if trying to grab the words he was looking for out of the thin air. "You know what I mean! I don't suppose _you_ put her in a pocket dimension, huh?"

Alcor gasped and held his hand up to his mouth in an expression of mock offense. "I did no such thing!" Of course not. Why would he go through the trouble of setting up a whole pocket dimension when he could just stick stuff in the mindscape to hide it from mortals like this guy?

…and he hadn't put the cat anywhere, pocket dimension or mindscape or otherwise. That was probably the most relevant point here.

"Well, then getting her back should be no problem for you, right?" Derek gave the demon a tight smile, but there was no humor in his eyes.

"Flattery will get you nowhere." Alcor replied absent-mindedly.

Okay. This was ridiculous. The cat had to be _somewhere_. So if she _had_ somehow gotten herself trapped somewhere with wards strong enough that even a demon of his stature couldn't sense her… he'd just have to see where she'd been before that. Alcor thought of her face, her name, of the moment in the past summoning when he'd dropped chubby little Lulu unceremoniously into her owner's outstretched arms… and saw nothing from after he had blipped away from the scene days before.

Just after the reunion, it seemed, Lulu had entirely ceased to exist.

He kept looking, desperate to find some meager tidbit about the cat's location- not even for his summoner's sake anymore, but because this was knowledge escaping his grasp, a deal undone and not by his own hands, an affront to his power, a _challenge_ \- but the search led to nothing but fatigue, energy used up on a task that was increasingly proving futile, exhaustion seeping into his very being.

Alcor finally deigned to return his attention to the scene in front of him and was greeted with trembling limbs and a face gone pale.

"I don't think you're willing to give what I'd ńe͝e̶d."

"…more than last time?"

Alcor just laughed, his cackle echoing in the musty room.

"Just tell me, unless it's like my _soul_ or something I'll at least think about-"

The demon held up his hand, cutting off Derek's rambling speech. "So that's a no to the soul trade?"

"What? Are- you're not seriously saying I'd need to give you my soul to get back Lulu?"

"That's the idea, but given that you're clearly not willing to fol͜low ̧thrǫuģh͟, I think I'll be off."

"A soul for a lost cat is not a fair trade, and you know it!"

"Who said anything about f҉air̸?"

And with that, Alcor transported himself into the mindscape, trying not to look too closely at his summoner's distraught face in the process.

Lulu's mysterious disappearance was a small problem, all things considered. He could almost convince himself that it wasn't worth investigating, given how minor of an issue it would be in the grand scheme of things. But soon enough, Alcor was confronted with evidence that showed that one missing cat was just the tip of the iceberg.

There was the lawyer who pointed out that their airtight deal to extend their mother's life hadn't prevented her untimely death after all. The woman still plagued by nightmares, her Alcor-granted good-luck charm vanished into ether. The boy who disappeared from his newfound loving home and returned to the parents who had thought it a good idea to offer him up to a demon.

One by one, his deals were being undone.

And as he scrambled to make more, to make up for all that had been lost, Alcor noticed that his power was waning. Binding circles that hadn't worked on him for centuries were once again able to restrain him. His visions of the future were growing so fuzzy as to be utterly indistinct.

Even when he retreated into his corner of the mindscape- his one safe spot, _his_ territory, where none were allowed to intrude- signs of his growing weakness still followed him. The Flock was growing smaller by the day. His meticulously-organized library had empty spaces where books had once been, and half the time Alcor couldn't even recall what was meant to go there, the gaps in his collection mirrored by gaps in his memory.

Something was deeply wrong, and he had no idea what.

The first potential cause that his mind leaped to was that some immensely powerful being was trying to destroy him, to tear apart his very existence from the inside out. But he hadn't made any new enemies recently, and even if some old foe was back to haunt him, who was powerful enough to eat away at his power without leaving a single clue about their presence?

And it was happening retroactively, too, deals that the demon _knew_ he'd made being erased as if they had never been, which would require something more than mere force, it'd require some kind of…

Some kind of time travel.

He was reminded of an old movie that he'd watched several times over long ago- Return to the Future, it had been titled. Grossly inaccurate about most of the details surrounding time travel, of course, but that was to be expected of a pre-Transcendence flick. But in between nonsense about lightning strikes and shiny cars, the film had outlined the workings of a time paradox in a way that was surprisingly close to their reality.

But what paradox could he have caused? What had he done, or not done, that would break the timestream so drastically?

As if to answer this unspoken question, a portal opened up a few feet away from Alcor, its shape a circle just large enough to contain his form, its surface shimmering blue-black against the grayscale surroundings of the mindscape. A hole in the fabric of reality exposed itself right before his eyes, practically begging to be investigated. And if something wasn't done… well, this might not be the last of the damage.

What lay on the other side was an utter mystery, but if this was a time paradox of some sort- and as he ruminated on the thought, Alcor grew more and more convinced that that was the only logical explanation for the chaos that now surrounded him- then it had to lead somewhere, some _when_ , that would fix things.

The fate of the world may well be contained within that circle's depths.

Alcor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and entered the portal.


	2. Chapter 2

As Alcor stepped through the hole in the space-time continuum, the dull monochrome scenery of the mindscape was replaced with a darkness tinged with deep blue, the thick walls and hard wooden floor of his beloved library now gone to reveal a nighttime sky studded with familiar constellations. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the portal which had brought him here had vanished, leaving nothing but stars and void in its wake.

He felt his connection to Mizar _snap_ , and suddenly there was nothing but emptiness where she had been. She was lost to him now, lost as completely as if they had never met.

He was alone, and there was no turning back.

Alcor closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to steady himself before scoping out his surroundings.

He knew the stars that surrounded him as well as he knew the back of his hand, but what grabbed the demon's attention was the forest below. As he floated downward, Alcor realized that he _knew_ those trees, had walked beneath them and flown above them so often that they were practically ingrained in him, though it had been a while since he'd thought to visit.

Perhaps it was only right that these woods, and the sleepy town nestled within, would be in the center of things once more.

Gravity Falls…

Oh, it was _good_ to be back.

Even if he hadn't traveled the path thousands of times over, Alcor would have been able to find his way to the Mystery Shack easily enough; on this dark night, the house filled the air around it with brilliant white light, the beam flickering on as the handful of other lights in the town dimmed. He would be hard-pressed to imagine a more perfect beacon.

Of course. Of all the nights that he could have ended up in Gravity Falls, it had to be this one, the one that would forever haunt the dark corners of his mind, the one that he would give anything not to have gone through once, let alone a second time around. The universe, it seemed, was going to continue taking every opportunity it could to mess with him. But was he here to prevent the pandemonium that was about to ensue, or to ensure that all went as it had in his own timeline?

Alcor zoomed through the walls of the Shack as easily as through the air, barely taking in his surroundings as he focused resolutely on his destination, desperate to reach the basement before it was too late.

The demon might have lost his mental link with Mizar, but maybe, just maybe, they could reconnect all the same.

But Mabel wasn't in the basement of the Mystery Shack, he found as he floated between its wooden beams. Neither was Grunkle Stan, or his past self, or even Bill.

But the two figures within it were familiar to him nonetheless, faces recognizable even as he noted how their features differed from those in his memories.

And the voice that called out into the abyss was one he had heard before, long ago, one he had nearly forgotten.

"When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, beware the beast with just one eye!"

He'd heard that prophecy before, albeit second-hand, from the man who now interrogated the one who had proclaimed it. Alcor knew how this story went, could remember the exact words that his great-uncle Ford had used to describe this scene, could guess what had remained unsaid.

It may not have been the one he had expected, but he had been dropped into the middle of a fateful night all the same.

Fiddleford stomped off, and Alcor couldn't help but think of what would come next for him- the secret society, the insanity, regret piled upon regret- how the one he knew as Old Man McGucket could have been wildly successful if he had ignored Stanford's request for assistance…

One fork in the road. That's all it took. One fork in the road, and he'd gone from wealth to ruin, from genius to madness.

"Fine! I'll do it without you! I don't need you! I don't need anyone!" Ford's words echoed through the cavernous space of the basement lab.

"Yeah, that's gonna work out just _great_." Alcor muttered.

Stanford turned around to face Alcor's direction, though his gaze was a few feet off the mark. "What? Who said that?"

The demon froze. He wasn't corporeal, was he? No, he shouldn't be… And Ford wasn't even looking at him, so that was right out. But he was the only one speaking in the room, unless…

Great-uncle Ford had never quite owned up to it, but Alcor had always had a sneaking suspicion about who had turned up to "help" after McGucket quit the portal project. He couldn't see or hear the suspect, though Ford had evidently done the latter, and it would only make sense that he could appear to some but not others, much as Alcor himself could be seen by Mizar when others remained blissfully unaware of his presence.

Alcor had vanquished him, of course, had banished him from existence for a good long time… but not in this timeline.

Not yet, anyway.

So he stood still, not blinking, not so much as moving a finger, just waiting for Bill Cipher to reveal himself.

A moment passed, then another.

There was no sign of Bill that he could perceive. If the triangle demon was present, he did not want himself to be known, at least not to anybody but Stanford.

Ford's glasses began to switch between two different pairs, though the man didn't seem to notice the discrepancy, continuing to glance across the room, his eyes never settling on one particular point.

That didn't seem like something Bill would do. Chaos and randomness was his thing, yes, but not on such a small, meaningless scale, and why would he mess with Ford at such a critical moment?

The symbols on the wheel surrounding the portal began to flicker between the arcane sigils that had been present before and a series of pictograms that Alcor knew all too well.

This wasn't Bill, he realized.

This was the time paradox.

For whatever reason, Bill must have found a plaything more interesting than a stodgy scientist in a backwards town in Oregon, or been caught up in activities that held a more straightforward reward- Alcor could guess what would appeal to Bill in such a manner, had been enticed by many of the same things over the years.

And Bill's absence was breaking down the time stream. Somebody needed to make Stanford realize how dangerous the portal was, so that events could unfold as they always had- the fight, the Mystery Shack, the Transcendence… Somebody needed to step in.

And there was only one candidate able, if not entirely willing, to step up to the plate.

Alcor shuddered before taking the shape of a yellow, one-eyed triangle and turning corporeal.

The portal symbols reverted to their previous state.

Ford's glasses settled on one look.

This was how it was supposed to be.

This was how it _had_ to be.

"What- _who_ are you?" Stanford called out, his gaze finally settling on Alcor's location.

 _Dipper Pines_ , Alcor did not say.

 _Your great-nephew_ , Alcor did not say.

"The name's Bill Cipher." Alcor said, floating downward until he was roughly eye to eye with Stanford. He changed his voice so it approximated that of the triangle demon, though it still sounded a bit off to his ears.

But, truth be told, he was very much okay with his impersonation of Bill Cipher being an imperfect one.

"And what kind of being are you?" Alcor could see the wheels in Stanford's head turning as he flipped open one of his journals, pen in hand, ready to jot down every bit of information that he could gather about the being in front of him. "A spirit? A shapeshifter?"

"Don't worry about the specifics right now. Just know that I'm here to help you out." Alcor had said similar words many times in attempts to convince somebody to make a deal. That's how he had to think of it. Just acting as the tempter, like he had before. Just reprising the role that he'd played so often in the past… future… whatever. He didn't need to think about the details. Details were irrelevant.

"I don't _need_ help." Stanford glared with fiery eyes at the floating demon.

"Really." He glanced around the room, gaze lingering on the notes left incomplete, the crash dummy splayed out on the ground. "Could've fooled me."

"What do you want, anyway?"

"I just want to give you a hand." Alcor snapped his fingers, and a skeleton hand appeared in the air next to Stanford, who flinched as it came closer. "Get it? A hand?" The demon couldn't help but laugh at his own pun as he snapped his fingers again, banishing the bony hand into the emptiness from which it had come. "No, but seriously, I need this portal working as much as you do. If you give me a chance, we could be the perfect team!"

"Really?" Stanford's eyes narrowed. "And how can I trust you?"

"You can't." Alcor struggled to find the words that Bill would use to express his cold-hearted sentiments. "Trust is an illusion you humans use to delude yourselves into thinking you understand each other. But I can give you a few hints for free before we really start on all this, if that'd make you feel better. And we've got the same goal, after all. What would I even get from double-crossing you?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course, but it got Alcor thinking. What _did_ Bill get out of scaring Ford into ending the portal project? Why didn't he just start up the Transcendence thirty years earlier, before any real resistance could be mounted? He searched his mind for the answers, but they eluded his grasp.

"I…" Stanford's eyes wandered, looking at the portal, the journals, the desk at which Fiddleford had used to work, before finally gazing back up at the demon. "I'm not so sure about all this. Can I think on it first?"

 _Oh thank goodness_. It was one thing making small talk with Ford while acting like Bill, setting the stage for the other demon's later appearance; it was another thing altogether to actually follow through with Bill's evil plan, to cause heartbreak and anguish and nearly destroy the world in the process…

"Sure thing, poindexter! Take all the time you need! Just let me know when you're ready to work something out, and I'll be there in a jiffy!"

And with that, the demon retreated into the mindscape, leaving his great-uncle alone with his thoughts.

Alcor reverted to his twelve-year-old form and curled up into the tightest ball that he could, arms clutching his knees, as golden tears dripped down his face.

It had been so easy.

All it had taken was one little push, and he'd taken on the shape, the voice, the mannerisms of the one who was the epitome of everything he swore he'd never become- and it was, he thought, a practically flawless impression.

But it would do the trick. Because if Bill hadn't noticed the goings-on of Gravity Falls already, well, he certainly would now. He couldn't very well ignore an impostor in his midst- Alcor knew that if the situation had been reversed, if he had been the one faced with some fledgling taking on his name and persona, it would be downright infuriating. Allowing such things to go on uninterrupted would be unthinkable.

The impersonator would have to be silenced.

And there was only one sure means of ensuring that silence.

Alcor's tears abated, replaced with a deep shivering that encompassed his whole body.

Was this what the universe had brought him here for?

He'd killed Bill before, ensured that that monster would no longer wreak chaos in this realm… and now, it seemed, Bill was about to return the favor.

And it might be sooner rather than later, for all he knew. Alcor had to make sure that the other demon wouldn't catch him off guard.

A stray thought banished the tears from his face and clothes, and he stood up, back straightened. The demon closed his eyes for a moment, and he transformed out of his young, weak, human form into a humanoid shape covered in darkness, a void where color had been, save for a few golden lines snaking around his body- lines that, he belatedly realized, were uncannily similar to the bricks that filled the form of his nemesis.

"Bill, I-"

Alcor paused, gathering together all his strength- depleted in recent days, true, but still greater by far than that of most demons- and rethinking his words. He could do better than that, stronger than that, present himself as a worthy foe rather than a scared child.

Maybe he was going to die here, but that didn't mean Alcor was going to go down without a fight.

"B̙̖͎̯͎̱̰͗̒ͬ̆̚I̩͇̦̻̙̹͋ͧ͠L͚̘̰̘̯ͅͅL̦͎͕͗͑ͦ̐ͅ ̴̗̮̜̗̬̖͂C̣̟̬̖̮̭̓̈̈́͂ͤI̍P̫͙̩͜H̯͙̗̺̙͉̥E̝ͬR͚͈̪̥̎̀̍̃̉̇̆! I know you can hear me, you͡ m͜o̸n̨s͠te̵r͜! And I challenge you to a fight to the d̸e͝ath͏, demon on demon!" Bile rose into his throat as he voiced those last words. It was true, though. He was Bill's equal now, regardless of who he had been centuries ago. He was a demon just the same.

After a few seconds of silence, Alcor added, "Don't avoid me, you còw̴a̡rd͢! Let's get this over with!"

The demon's words rang out through the empty space around him, the cry echoing back in a faded, warped imitation of itself after traversing the breadth and width of the mindscape.


	3. Chapter 3

Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours. Alcor's threats grew increasingly more vitriolic and nonsensical. And still Bill Cipher did not appear.

Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe threatening to tear the demon apart limb from limb was actually scaring him off… but no, that didn't seem right. For an upstart demon- somebody who, as far as anybody else knew, had just been born- to boast that much was bound to attract attention, attract retribution, especially when he had already antagonized Bill by acting as him. Yet the mindscape was as silent and static as ever, showing no signs that anybody, let alone Bill, had heard the words that Alcor was screaming into the void. Bill wasn't rising to the challenge.

Well, if Bill wasn't going to come meet him, Alcor would just have to hunt him down.

If he were Bill Cipher, where would he hide?

Alcor wasn't quite sure. He knew lots of things about his past and present foe, but where he went when not working on bringing about the end of the world wasn't one of them.

He would have to find out the hard way.

Alcor sighed and began flitting from place to place in the mindscape, scouring the realm for a sign, no matter how minor, of Bill's presence. It was not an easy hunt- the mindscape was vast, and without having any sense of where to go, there were no shortcuts to be found, no easy way of narrowing down the scope of the search. Days went by, long days filled solely with the mind-numbing monotony of jumping from spot to spot and glancing around before moving elsewhere.

He found nothing.

What brought the search to a halt was not any signal within the mindscape, but a stirring in action in the world of the physical.

Somebody was calling Bill's name.

The source of the sound, Alcor found, was none other than Stanford Pines. The man had deep, dark bags under his eyes, and his hands shook as they straddled the edges of the journal.

"Bill Cipher, I want your help now." Ford's voice was gruff and hoarse.

Alcot tingled with excitement as he floated in the air, careful to keep himself invisible from the human's watchful eyes. That was a direct summons, he was sure of it. Not a formal one, to be sure- no candles, no circles, nothing but a simple request spoken aloud- but the intent was there, and that was enough, he would come, he _had_ to, Alcor knew too much about how the demon had "helped" his great-uncle in the past to have any doubt about that-

"Bill Cipher?" Ford's aura was tinged with the deep blue of uncertainty now, doubt pervading the man's mind with every passing second.

Where was Bill? One instance of him being too distracted to seek out Stanford at a moment of vulnerability was one thing, but refusing to appear a second time, and when he was being directly summoned no less? What could Bill be doing that was so much more important than laying the groundwork for the Transcendence, implementing the first steps of his master plan?

Stanford slumped his shoulders, his eyes settling back onto the half-finished page of the journal that he had been working on, which was covered in near-illegible scribbles. "Of course. Just somebody else letting me down again. I'll do this myself, then, I don't need him."

Alcor struggled to reconcile his knowledge of how events went in his timeline with Bill's lack of presence here. Maybe the demon was trying to bolster his energy before taking on the challenge of setting up the portal, or he was working on some part of the Transcendence that lay outside Gravity Falls, and he was still somehow oblivious to Alcor's impersonation, his challenges, his searching…

Only one thing left to do. If nothing else had grabbed Bill's attention, well, intercepting an actual _summons_ ought to do the trick, right?

Alcor took on the triangular shape of his foe once more, appearing in the air behind Stanford.

"You sure about that?"

Ford jumped at the unexpected sound, knocking his leg against the desk as he stood to face the demon. He was paler and thinner than Alcor had even seen him before.

"I… I was starting to think you wouldn't show."

"Relax, Sixie. I told you, I'm here for ya. Now, what seems to be the problem?"

"I don't _know_!" Stanford dug his hands into his scalp, pacing back and forth across the length of his desk. "Something must have happened when Fiddleford went through the portal, because the next time I tried to use it, it just started sparking and died and now it won't turn on no matter what I try and what am I going to do what if I can't fix it my research will be _ruined_ all my hard work will be for _nothing_ -"

"Calm down. All your work will pay off soon enough, I can promise you that much." The image of what that "pay-off" would be flickered through his head, as clearly as if he had been standing in the middle of it all- Stanford flying into the portal, Stanley unable to do anything but watch, a doomsday device left standing…

"Really?" Ford dropped his hands back to his sides and slowed his pacing to a stop, staring up at the demon with hopeful eyes.

"Sure thing. I can help you fix this up in a jiffy, and then you'll have plenty of time to explore what's on the other side of that there portal."

"And…" Ford arched an eyebrow suspiciously. "Will it do to me whatever it did to Fiddleford?"

"Not a chance. Fiddleford was weak, unprepared. But you know what you're doing. You'll be just fine."

Stanford nodded curtly. "I suppose that makes sense. Now, you said you can help me get this thing working again, right?"

The differences between the scene around him and the one residing in Alcor's memories stood out as intensely as if a spotlight had been shining on each one. A sigil out of place here, a crack in the rock there…

"Yeah, I think I know just the thing."

No deals were made between the two, even though Alcor could feel himself grow weaker with every deal unmade, every modicum of energy spent without compensation. That was Bill's job, not his. After a few hours he absconded back to the mindscape, leaving his great-uncle with a simple summoning circle and an incantation, identical to what he'd found in the journal thirty years later.

And where was Bill in all this? Alcor still had no clue.

Unsure of what else to do, he started warping through the mindscape once more, shouting taunts at Bill Cipher in the hopes that one of them would finally, _finally_ catch his attention. He took a few breaks to watch over Stanford and see if things had progressed on that end, but there was no sign of him interacting with Bill at all, let alone using the circle and chant that Alcor had provided.

When he finally stumbled into somebody in the mindscape, it was a demon who looked nothing like the one he sought, a small round thing covered in brown hair and curved spikes and glowing green eyes. Alcor didn't know the demon's name, didn't recognize them from any interactions or demonology texts, but he could sense that they were young, immature, still settling on their name and place in the world.

"Can you pipe down? S̕om̴e of us are trying to res̕t̴ here." Their voice was high-pitched and shrill, though much quieter than his own shouts.

Alcor narrowed his eyes. "I don't suppose _you_ know where Bill Cipher is, do you, little one?"

The demon snorted, the sound making their hair rustle. "Never heard of the guy. Sounds like he's some kind of demon, based on what I gathered from all your yelling about him? Pretty lame name for a demon, if you ask m̛e."

Alcor drew closer, his claws pressed up against the demon's side in a none-too-veiled threat. "Don't͠ ̵li͏e͡ ̛t͠o m͘e!̵"

The other demon shook violently, their eyes paling. "I'm not lying, I swear, I've never heard the name in my life! If he's that much of a big-shot, maybe- maybe he gave you a fake name? Like I said, that name _sounds_ made-up to me, I mean, who ever heard of a demon going by the name _Bill_ , sounds like some weak little h̕uman̸…"

"A fake name, you think? Hmm… then perhaps a description would help j̸o͠g ̸y͡ou̶r ͜m̧em̴ory." Alcor dug his claws in ever so slightly.

"S-sure, absolutely, just tell me about this 'Bill' and I'll, uh, help you- help you find him! Honest!" The waves of terror floating off the demon were palpable. At least _somebody_ around here could tell that he was a force to be reckoned with. Now if only Bill had gotten that memo…

"He has the shape of a yellow triangle, his sides all of equal length. He has one eye, and wears a top hat and a bow tie and has…" Alcor waved the arm that wasn't occupied with threatening the other demon in the air vaguely. "-these black, sort of stick figure arms and legs… wait. There's an easier way to do this."

And, in the blink of an eye, Alcor took on the triangular shape of his foe once more, thin hand still clenched around the round demon's body, before reverting to his usual form a few seconds later.

"He looks like _that_. Seem familiar?"

"N-no, I- I can't say it does." Their eyes looked him up and down before settling on making eye contact, and Alcor was uncomfortably reminded of the traits that he had subconsciously inherited from Bill, how he, too, now defaulted to wearing a top hat and a bow tie, a fashion sense so unlike that of his human self…

"Alright. One̕ mor͘e̛ ̢s͞h͞ot. What he's trying to do-" _what, in the future, he almost managed to do, what he would have done if not for Alcor's intervention-_ "-is merge the physical realm with the mindscape, widen existing connections between the two worlds until they're one and the same. Now, a plan like that _can't_ have gone unnoticed. That's a big deal right there. So even a p͝iṕs͢q͘ueak ̛l̛i͘k͘e y̸o͢u should have heard _some_ rumors about the matter."

"Hmm…" After a minute's pause, the demon finally perked up, its eyes widening in delight. "Oh, I did hear something about that! I think K'nar and Cerzrex were talking and I didn't manage to overhear _that_ much, I mean it's not like I was _trying_ to eavesdrop I know better than that of course, but-"

"Tell me. Tell me ev͜ery͡t̀hi̢ng͝."

"There's something going on in, uh, some small town in America I think, where some magic stuff has already managed to leak out, I guess? And there's this, this portal thing there, this human was trying to mess with the dimensions or something-"

"I kn̸ơw all that. Tell me about B͡il̵l."

"Right, right. So this, uh, this 'Bill' guy. The human was having trouble, I think- maybe there was more than one human? Or there used to be and there was only one left? Like I said I didn't get too close, I don't wanna mess with those guys- and then this, this demon guy appeared. And K'nar and Cerzrex didn't know who, and that's weird right, like, I thought they knew _everybody_ but- anyway, he said he'd help out the human, and then just today, I think, he came back to do stuff with the portal biz, and those two sounded worried, they didn't like what he was doing at _all_ , and if they're worried then I guess I should be scared too because compared to them I'm a nobody-"

Alcor glared at the demon before him. Could he have found a more useless informant if he _tried_? "So. One meeting when the humans split, and another today, you said? And that's all, just those two?"

"I- I think so, yeah, that's what I heard, I could be mistaken but-"

Alcor sighed, closing his eyes and massaging his forehead for a brief moment. He knew those two meetings well enough, though how word had spread about them he had no idea- perhaps it was inevitable that word spread within a magical community that thrived upon psychic powers and arcane knowledge. But they were not what he had wanted to hear about, not by a long shot.

"You fool, that was _me_ those times, I wanted to know about the _real_ Bill Cipher- what he's up to, what he plans on doing about this new demon playing pretend in his name- not… not just telling me about _me_!"

Alcor's mind raced, uncertainty filling him as much as anger. Because somehow, it seemed, this nosy little eavesdropper had managed to go their entire life without once hearing the name Bill Cipher- hell, without even being able to recognize the demon's appearance. But if Bill was such a big-shot, how could he have escaped notice for all this time? Bill being a fake name- and, admittedly, it _did_ seem a little plain for a demon, now that Alcor thought about it- could only explain some of that. Either he had altered his appearance as well as his name from their usual state every single time he'd interfered with the goings-on of Gravity Falls, or… or…

Or there was no Bill, and there never had been.

"I- I'm sorry, sir, that's all I know, you can always ask somebody else, there are loads of demons who would know more about this than little old _me_ -"

"That settles it." Alcor bared his fangs, making the younger demon quiver in fear. "Three strikes. Y̛ou'͟re͞ out̛."

The other demon barely put up a fight.

Physically, Alcor felt great afterwards. It had been some time since he had last eaten another demon's soul, and while other meals could be helpful there was nothing quite like the rush of energy obtained from consuming one of his own kind. He felt like himself again, all the weakness that had clung to him since he first noticed the effects of the paradox vanished entirely, replaced with power, enough power to take on anybody else, to take on the very world if he so chose.

The sudden rush of physical power, a vast strength replacing the energy that had been slowly but surely draining away, almost made up for the pain that now pervaded his every thought.

Almost.

Because the pieces were finally fitting together. Why he'd been sent back here. Why Bill was perpetually absent from a history that was supposed to feature him so prominently. Why that other demon had never heard of Bill before, despite having "overheard" a striking amount of information about Alcor's own dealings in Gravity Falls.

It all led to one inescapable conclusion.

 _No_.

No, that wasn't possible. Bill Cipher had been around for- centuries? millennia?- some great length of time, anyway. He was way older than _this_. And that wasn't just a hunch on his part, Alcor had _proof_ , there were ancient parchments and tapestries and-

And his mind filled in the blanks all too willingly. A deal here, a suggestion there, scatter about a handful of carefully-chosen pieces of "evidence" and let the gullible little humans draw their own warped conclusions…

(Gullible little humans like he had been once, because the one he had really needed to fool with all this was _himself_ , back when he knew so little that he didn't even realize how ignorant he truly was.)

…And one "Bill Cipher" would burst onto the scene, an identity made of whole cloth, created from memories of what was, what would be, what must be. Created from memories of loathing, of fighting, of battles lost and a war won. Created by the only one around who knew of Bill's existence.

Alcor had feared, from the moment he realized that he had become a demon, turning into Bill Cipher. Now, his eternal fear had come true… though, truth be told, he'd never pictured it quite like _this_.

Before he could more fully process the implications of this revelation, Alcor felt himself being pulled away by a gentle tug.

A summons.

It couldn't be from Alcor's summoning circle. No proof of its existence, of _his_ existence, had ever been discovered pre-Transcendence, for reasons that until not so long ago he had thought self-evident.

There was only one other circle that had ever had even the slightest effect on him. It hadn't worked for centuries, of course, but then, nobody had tried using it for centuries either. News of Bill's death spread fast, after all.

Alcor arrived on the scene in the blink of an eye.

Or rather, Bill arrived- after all, that was the name that would be written in the journals, the one that would go down in history, the one cursed by many a tongue for years to come.

He was greeted by a half-awake Stanford, his right hand smeared with black ink and resting beside a sketch of a summoning circle- the design that Alcor had given out, the one that he had expected would let him wash his hands of this whole mess but had instead only embroiled him in it further.

Though his eyelids were drooping, a fire burned in Ford's eyes as he looked up at the demon.

"I have a few ideas that I'd like to bounce off of you, if you don't mind."

There was a pause, and Alcor struggled to think of Bill's response, to piece together his script from the tattered snippets that he had been able to gather together over the years. But Ford beat him to the punch.

"I have to say, Bill, I think we make a good team, you and I."

It was intended as a compliment, he knew.

But that just made it hurt all the more.


	4. Epilogue

The next thirty years were both the longest and the shortest of Alcor's life.

Long because each minute felt like an eternity when spent without friends, without family, without anybody but the handful of people who stumbled into Bill's summoning circle. Long because when he did get to interact with his loved ones, it was to do terrible things to them, and he knew just how those actions would ruin their lives, had seen it all play out before from the other side. Long because there was nothing left for him to do but act as fate's puppet, left waiting in the wings in between acts.

Short because Alcor knew what awaited him at the end of those thirty years, knew down to the minute when the show would come to an end. Though he'd lived far longer than he would have without the Transcendence, longer than any human was meant to live, when the certainty of death lingered over him, it suddenly felt like not nearly enough, like it had passed in the blink of an eye. A world of possibilities out there, and he would never get to do more than scratch the surface. After agonizing years spent having to come to terms with his own immortality, now he faced a reminder that he was not so invincible after all.

Eventually, of course, the thirty years ran out, and the day that he so feared came to pass. The day of the Transcendence. The day which was forever seared into his mind, every detail preserved as if it had happened only yesterday. The day in which past and future fought, in which one would emerge forever transformed, and the other not emerging at all.

Alcor knew how this played out, knew everything he had to do, but that didn't make it any easier to nearly destroy the world, nearly destroy his family, nearly destroy _himself_.

One of the last things that Alcor saw before entering his mental battle with young Dipper was Mabel- his Mizar, his Twin Star, his _sister_ \- looking at him with utter hatred in her eyes.

But he didn't have much time to dwell on that before the fight began.

He was supposed to lose. He needed to lose. It was his time, he knew that.

But parts of Alcor's mind weren't willing to just roll over and accept that.

Part of Alcor wanted to rebel against his fate, wanted to survive no matter what the cost, didn't care if the world fell to pieces around him as long as he was there to watch it burn-

Part of Alcor just wanted to give some signal to the outside world before he died, let somebody know what had happened, that he wasn't the evil mastermind that they all saw him as, to replace the hatred in his sister's eyes with understanding and pity, and that was such a small change in the grand scheme of things, that couldn't hurt anything that badly right-

He wanted to live it couldn't end like this he wasn't _ready_ -

But the part of him that accepted his fate, that fought the instinctual urge for survival that pervaded his being, was enough to make it all come crashing down.

Alcor's last thoughts were a jumbled mixture of denial and anger and sorrow and acceptance, all the stages of grief mixed together and muddled until finally coalescing into a single sentence:

 _So this is it_.

And then it was all over.

Death, Alcor found out, wasn't as painful as he had feared, not nearly as much as what had preceded it.

The story proceeded as it always had, as it always would.

The world kept turning.

Tales of Bill Cipher were replaced with tales of Alcor the Dreambender were replaced with tales of other demons, other monsters.

The holes in the fabric of reality quietly, unceremoniously stitched themselves back together.

And over the course of thousands of years, a soul divided unlike any other- victim and villain, man and demon, killer and killed- pieced itself back together.


End file.
